Q:         I'll ask the questions here, Mr. Wilde. But no, Curiosity Freeman has not testified and will not testify before me. If your wife was so docile why didn't you take her to Johnstown with you?

A:         She was easily upset, most especially by loud noise. And her condition had been worse of late.

Q:         In what way?

A:         In every way. She was in a decline.

Q:         Her mania was worse?

A:         I— Yes.

Q:         You hesitate, sir. What is it you meant to say?

A:         She was worse, I cannot deny it.

Q:         Well, then, to the subject of your recent marriage to the Widow Kuick.

A:         Ask her to leave the room, first.

Q:         This is a public hearing, sir, and the accused has a right to be present. You will answer the questions put to you about Mrs. Wilde, or go back to gaol.

A:         Then send me back to gaol, for I've nothing to say except this: I'll be filing for divorce with the court in Johnstown as soon as I can get there.

Q:         Quiet! Quiet! I'll have quiet or see the lot of you out into the weather. Constable McGarrity, can you do nothing with this rabble? Now, Mr. Wilde, you say you intend to divorce your wife of a few weeks. Has the marriage been consummated?

A:         That's none of your business.

Q:         Quiet, or I will put you all in gaol if I have to drag you to Johnstown to do it! Now. Mr. Wilde, you must have grounds for divorce.

A:         She lied to me.

Q:         Your wife lied to you. Are you referring to the letter written by her first husband and submitted into evidence in this hearing?

A:         That and other things.

Q:         I doubt the court will be swayed, if that is all you have to offer when pleading a divorce.

A:         I won't live with her as her husband, no matter what the courts have to say.

Q:         Did this change of heart have to do with the death of your wife, or of Cookie Fiddler?

A:         It has to do with many things.

Q:         Well, then, do you think Mrs. Wilde had something to do with those deaths? Mr. Wilde?

A:         I don't know.

Q:         But you think her capable of violence?

A:         I don't know.

Q:         Mr. Wilde, your wife's name has been raised in connection with a number of deaths. The elder Widow Kuick, your first wife, and Cookie Fiddler. Do you know her to be guilty of any of these crimes?

A:         I don't know anything about her, and it seems I never did. You'll have to talk to her if you want to know what happened. Not that you should expect to hear the truth.

Chapter 19

For once, Elizabeth would have welcomed a good hard January blizzard, but the weather would not cooperate. She saw that when she went out on the porch to put on her snowshoes. Overhead the skies were crystalline blue and uncaring of her dilemma.

“You don't have to go,” Nathaniel said next to her. He finished buckling her shoes and unfolded himself, looking down at her with a disapproving frown that reminded her, for just a passing moment, of Daniel.

“I promised Curiosity that I would be there,” Elizabeth said, squinting at the glare of sun on the snow. “To speak up for her, if need be.”

At that Nathaniel made a deep sound of disapproval. His dislike for Baldy O'Brien, always a substantial one, had been nourished by the things he had seen and heard in the first day of the hearings. Sitting next to her husband in the meetinghouse, Elizabeth had felt his irritation taking firmer hold of him with every new witness or statement.

“He shouldn't have read Isaiah's letter out loud,” Elizabeth said now, as if Nathaniel had complained. “For the sake of the girl, he could have kept that much quiet, at least.”

“There's a lot he could have left unsaid. No doubt there will be a lot more of it to listen to today.”

With that they set off into the clear morning, and for a long time they didn't speak at all. Nathaniel was listening to the world, to the rustlings and calls and whispers that gave him a clear picture of the woods beyond what Elizabeth could see or even imagine. It was his way, and she could not find fault with it, no matter how much she would have liked to carry on the discussion.

The evening before, on the way home, she had found it very hard to keep her silence until they reached Lake in the Clouds. They had barely closed the door behind them when she said, “That did not go very well.”

“Goddamn Baldy O'Brien for a pompous fool,” Nathaniel had answered. “By Christ, I'd like to know how he holds on to these appointments of his. He's got a headlock on somebody in Albany, that much is sure.”